In the Americas, Big Brother is watching reporters

February 16, 2010 12:56 AM ET

By Carlos Lauría

The topic being investigated by two Colombian reporters was explosive enough that it required unusual security. Fearful that the subjects would learn prematurely of the story, the reporters took separate notes, which they did not share and which they later destroyed. They didn’t communicate by telephone or e-mail, and they met only in public locations. They relayed only the barest information to their own sources.

It was not enough. Before
Canal Uno television and the newsmagazine Semana were ready in April to
break their joint story, which would address influence-peddling allegations
against the two sons of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the
administration knew all about it. A government spokesman told Canal Uno that it
was well aware of the inquiry.

Daniel Coronell, the Canal
Uno news director and Semana columnist who led the investigation with
reporter Ignacio Gómez, is convinced that his team had been victimized by
illegal government espionage. It’s possible, he concedes, that word could have
leaked to the administration through other avenues.

But in some very important
ways, it does not matter.

When news erupted in
February that national intelligence agents had subjected journalists,
politicians, judges, and human rights defenders to illegal phone tapping,
e-mail interception, and surveillance for much of the decade, it created a
well-founded perception that the Colombian government was closely and
constantly watching the press and other critics.

The unlawful spying
carried out by the national intelligence agency—which operates under Uribe’s
authority—was one of two such scandals to play out in the region in 2009, both
of which targeted journalists, among others, and caused a significant chilling
effect on press freedom. In Argentina, a federal investigation was examining
whether national intelligence agents tapped the phones and hacked the e-mail of
critical journalists, politicians, judges, and artists as part of a campaign intended
to discredit and deter their work.

As a result, journalists
in both countries told CPJ, sources are becoming more reluctant to talk to the
press. Coronell calls the espionage “the most serious threat against freedom of
the press in Colombia” today because it endangers confidential sources.
Journalists reporting on official corruption are looking over their shoulders
and taking extraordinary steps to ensure their private conversations are not
intercepted or their e-mails hacked. Their work has been harmed, and their
already tense relations with government officials have become more
contentious.

Spying has an unfortunate
history in the region. One of the most extreme examples occurred in Peru in the
early 1990s, when the intelligence service under President Alberto Fujimori
engaged in assassination plots, death threats, wiretapping, surveillance, and
smear tactics to intimidate the press.

In recent years,
government espionage against journalists has been reported in Latin American
countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia. In Cuba, spying is standard procedure:
Cuban state security agents have kept journalists and dissidents under constant
surveillance for decades, intercepting and recording their phone conversations.
In Mexico, opposition Sen. Manilo Beltrones has made allegations of political
espionage, fueling perceptions in the press corps that it, too, has been
targeted. The United States is not immune to such practices. In 2008, the FBI
issued an apology after agents violated procedures in obtaining the telephone
records of several journalists covering Islamic terrorism in Southeast Asia.
The FBI would not disclose the nature of the underlying investigation that led
to the 2004 record collection.

In Colombia, it was Semana that exposed the extensive spy scheme devised by top officials in the Administrative
Department of Security, the intelligence service also known as DAS. Coronell
led the list of reporters being monitored by the DAS, but the roll call read
like a who’s who of Colombian journalism: Semana Director Alejandro
Santos; Julio Sánchez Cristo, director of national W Radio; Darío Arizmendi,
director of national Caracol Radio; Ramiro Bejarano, a columnist for the daily El Espectador; Hollman Morris, journalist and producer of the weekly news show
“Contravía” on Canal Uno; and Félix de Bedout of W Radio.

The Attorney General’s
office launched an inquiry that resulted in the arrests of several top
intelligence officials, including former DAS Deputy Director José Miguel
Narváez, in August and September. Four other DAS directors were under
investigation in late year. Uribe denied involvement, put the blame on rogue
DAS officials who acted as a “mafia,” and said his government would implement
reforms.

Wiretaps, illegal in
Colombia without judicial order, had started in early 2003 and stretched into
mid-2009—beyond even the first news reports of the scandal. During that period,
DAS officials monitored and recorded thousands of e-mails and telephone
conversations, and followed opponents, judges, and journalists. International
human rights groups and diplomats were also spied upon, according to news
reports. Semana, for example, obtained a recording of an
intercepted phone call between a U.S. diplomat and a Colombian Supreme Court
judge investigating links between Uribe’s supporters and right-wing
paramilitary groups. The Miami-based daily El Nuevo Herald reportedin June that telephone
conversations and e-mails between CPJ staffers and Colombian journalists had
been intercepted. In a statement, CPJ demanded the government bring an
immediate end to the spying and noted the grave damage it was causing to free
expression.

Reporter Morris, known for
his in-depth coverage of Colombia’s five-decade civil conflict, said he
believed that spies had targeted his confidential sources to neutralize them
and to discredit his reporting. A harsh government critic, he has been derided
by Uribe and other high-ranking officials as an ally of the leftist
guerrillas—accusations that Morris said acted as “a green light for the DAS” to
monitor his conversations and correspondence. The target of death threats in
2005, Morris has actually been under DAS protection. “It’s ironic: The same
people tasked with protecting me are the ones who are supposedly spying,” he
said. “It is like sleeping with the enemy.”

Morris has sued the
government over the surveillance. He said documents unearthed as part of his
lawsuit show that e-mails sent to him by CPJ and the Organization of American
States’ special rapporteur for freedom of expression, among others, had been
intercepted by the DAS.

Surveillance of
journalists did not start with the Uribe administration. In 1996, during the
administration of President Ernesto Samper, reports alleged that the
intelligence service was spying on reporters. But that espionage was sporadic,
Coronell said, compared to the systematic and persistent spying that occurred
this decade. The Uribe government, according to Coronell, has deliberately
sought to conflate critics with enemies. “This is clearly an abuse of power,”
he said.

In Argentina, a federal investigation that
continued in late year wasexamining whether high-ranking officials had either ordered or tacitly
approved telephone and e-mail surveillance of political opponents and
journalists, according to news reports and CPJ interviews. Judge SandraArroyo Salgado’s investigation began after hackers broke into the
e-mail accounts of several reporters and media executives, read the
journalists’ private exchanges with sources, and distributed the stolen
messages to other parties. The activities allegedly took place in 2006, during
the administration of Néstor Kirchner, husband of the current president,
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Among the victims was
Daniel Santoro, a senior investigative reporter with the country’s largest
daily, Clarín, whose off-the-record interview with a judge
on a major drug trafficking case was stolen and relayed to a lawyer for one of
the defendants. Luis Majul, host of the weekly show “La Cornisa” on América TV,
said that a hacker sent a bogus e-mail from his Yahoo account to his contacts
calling for a boycott of Clarín. The message revealed the e-mail user names
and passwords of more than 20 Argentine reporters and media executives.
Government officials have denied that the intelligence service, known as the
Secretaría de Inteligencia, orSI, was involved. No arrests had been made by
late year.

“Revolting techniques from
the intelligence service have never been used in such a systematic and
efficient way to intimidate and discredit opposition politicians or independent
journalists,” columnist Alfredo Leuco wrote in October in Perfil, a weekend paper critical of the administration. “There have
never been so many complaints about serious violations of our colleagues’ privacy,”
said Leuco, who believes the government is trying to undermine independent
reporting.

Political opponents such
as former President Eduardo Duhalde and one-time allies such as former Chief of
Cabinet Alberto Fernández have asserted publicly that they had been the targets
of espionage. Mariano Obarrio, a political correspondent with the Buenos
Aires-based daily La Nación who has reported extensively on the topic,
said that an intelligence team began conducting surveillance of political
opponents, business people, journalists, and even some administration officials
in 2003. The team, Obarrio reported, worked under direct orders from top SI
officials, wiretapping telephone lines and intercepting e-mails without court
orders, which would constitute a violation of the country’s 2001 intelligence
law. The spy agency’s operations are under direct supervision of the president.

Obarrio found himself a
target in 2006. Unidentified assailants broke into his house, threatened his
family, and told him he was being followed. After his newspaper hired a lawyer
and investigator to look into the attack, Obarrio discovered his phone line was
tapped. The nerve-racking events took place shortly after Obarrio sent the SI’s
deputy director a series of questions concerning espionage activities. Obarrio
filed a judicial complaint about the harassment and surveillance, but the
investigation produced no results. Although the journalist continued to cover
government policies critically, heeventually dropped his
work on espionage. “I understood it as a message intended to disrupt my work. I
felt the pressure, and decided it was better for me and my family to forget
about it,” he said.

Venezuelan authorities make little effort to
conceal espionage against reporters. Conversations involving political opponents of President Hugo
Chávez Frías and critics in the media are often monitored and recorded by the
secret service, according to CPJ research and press reports. State-owned media
have reproduced segments of those conversations to damage the reputations of
government critics. Alberto Federico Ravell, general director of Globovisión, a
television station known for its strong opposition views, found his October
2008 phone conversation with Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the weekly Tal Cual, aired on the pro-government station Venezolana de Televisión.
Ravell filed a complaint, but it generated no results.

In Bolivia, the Senate
examined a case in which Juan José Espada, a reporter with the critical
television station Unitel, was apparently under surveillance by intelligence
agents in the national police. Police commander Gen. Miguel Vásquez said the
surveillance had happened without his knowledge. A Senate committee formed to
study the case recommended that it be investigated further by theAttorney General’s office, Espada said, but no prosecutor was
assigned.

Peru’s Fujimori set a
notorious precedent in Latin America. By employing a well-oiled and massive spy
network, Fujimori consolidated his hold on power after taking office in 1990. During
his tenure, independent journalists were under intense scrutiny: Their phones
were tapped, and their movements watched. Reporters were detained and
questioned on trumped-up terrorism and tax charges; some were kidnapped and
threatened by members of Peru’s shadowy National Intelligence Service. The
Fujimori government fed information gathered in its espionage to tabloids
sympathetic to the administration (and loaded with state advertising). They, in
turn, launched smear campaigns against leading critics in the media, some of
whom were forced into exile by the negative attention.

In April 2009, Fujimori
was sentenced to 25 years in jail after being convicted of crimes against
humanity for directing military death squads. He was sentenced again, in September,
to six years in prison for secretly wiretapping politicians, journalists, and
businessmen during his decade in power, along with bribing congressmen and
buying off a television station and a newspaper editorial board to back his
2000 re-election campaign.

“Espionage during the
Fujimori era has been well-studied: It was systemic, extremely organized, and
centralized,” said Ricardo Uceda, executive director of the regional press
group Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, and a top Peruvian investigative reporter.
“Fujimori needed such a system to exercise power. He was well aware of
journalists’ affairs and their flaws, and knew perfectly how to neutralize the
media.”

Although espionage
campaigns in Peru in the 1990s and Colombia in this decade were both pervasive
and intrusive, there was a significant power imbalance during the Fujimori
regime that made the spying more pernicious, Uceda pointed out. The Fujimori
government, Uceda said, had such tight control over the judiciary that it could
ensure government espionage would go unchecked. That’s different from
contemporary Colombia, where the scandal has prompted an in-depth probe and
arrests.

Still, major reforms are
far from certain in either Colombia or Argentina. Argentine officials appear to
be brushing off legitimate threats to the country’s democracy. The 2001
intelligence law sets prison penalties of up to four years for illegal
espionage, but the congressional committee tasked with overseeing intelligence
activities has yet to take substantive steps to enforce the law and control
illegal spying.

In Colombia, where the
scandal hit just as Uribe was flirting with a bid for a third term, some
possible reform is in its early stages. In October, Congress began considering
a bill aimed at creating a smaller intelligence agency with more limited
functions, news reports said.External pressure may do some good. The
Inter-American Commission, the autonomous human rights body of the Organization
of American States, expressed concern about the scandal and urged the Colombian
government to conduct a thorough review to prevent violations of international
human rights standards.

Vice President Francisco
Santos CalderÓn has publicly acknowledged that the situation is serious, and
said the institutions of democracy are acting. DAS Director Felipe Muñoz said
the agency will cut its workforce and focus on counterintelligence and border
control, according to press reports. But who is really in charge? A November
report by Semana said that investigators examining the illegal
espionage have themselves been threatened and followed in an attempt to disrupt
the probe.

The solution rests in the
message sent from the top of the civilian government. Journalists and free
press advocates say that real reform can be achieved only through strong
political will exercised by leaders at the highest levels of government. They
must send a strong message that the intelligence service cannot be used against
members of the judiciary, the political opposition, and the independent press
as a means to preserve power.